Which is the best city for a new postgraduate student to move to based on the average salary of a Computer Science (CS) Major in the area, cost of housing in the area (renting specifically), and percent of computer science related jobs in each major city in the US?

Major Cities in Each of the States

In this map, we have chosen the most populated cities in each of the 50 states to give information for. Below, you will be able to find information such as average salary, cost of living, and cost of rent.

What is it exactly?

In this context, we are referring to the annual average salary through each state, which was found by averaging together for all counties and areas in the state.

How it was found:

To find the average salary for each state in our dataset, I used the PUMAs data we had collected and saved into our box drive. I had to separate the county and state in one of the columns to create two vectors of state and county names was created. This was used to build an average for each state. Once the data was collected, it was averaged together and then displayed.

Originally Texas had caused some issues when averaging due to the way I had separated the data when creating the vectors. I managed to solve the problem after going back to it.

Question 1: How is the average salary of a CS major affected by the population and location in each of the major cities?

The average salary is affected by region and major cities. By looking at the map, we are able to see how more populated states have a higher average salary compared to less populated states.

Interactive Map with Major Cities

Currently the location is centered in Oxford since The University of Mississippi. When zooming out, you will be to see the surrounding areas and their information.

Question 2: Based on the leaflet, do you see a common pattern with the popularity of cities and high population density?

Yes, there is a common pattern that can be seen based on the leaflet. Most of the bigger and more populated cities tend to be close to bodies of water. This makes sense since when people were settling down and forming towns and such, they wanted to live by a resource they could use for farming, crops, bathing, etc.

Question 3. What are the Top 5 Closest Locations to the University of Mississippi for a Computer Science Student to Move to?

The 5 Closest Locations to The University of Mississippi are: 1. Jackson, MS 2. Huntsville, AL 3. Little Rock, AR 4. Nashville, TN 5. Atlanta, GA

Most Populated City for each State and their Average Yearly Income

Below is a table to specifically see each state and their average yearly income in a quick view

States Cities Longitude Latitude Abbreviation Average Salary
Alabama Huntsville -86.586105 34.730370 AL 71136.96
Alaska Anchorage -149.900284 61.218056 AK 73324.30
Arizona Phoenix -112.072578 33.448200 AZ 76613.18
Arkansas Little Rock -92.289597 34.746483 AR 68233.05
California Los Angeles -118.243683 34.052235 CA 93156.61
Colorado Denver -104.990250 39.739235 CO 88465.34
Connecticut Bridgeport -73.189484 41.179192 CT 97654.63
Delaware Wilmington -75.545097 39.744431 DE 82987.56
District of Columbia Washington, D.C. -76.464844 39.655610 DC 98121.12
Florida Jacksonville -81.655647 30.332184 FL 73925.00
Georgia Atlanta -84.387985 33.748997 GA 73916.32
Hawaii Honolulu -157.858337 21.306944 HI 73701.28
Idaho Boise -116.202316 43.615021 ID 74198.73
Illinois Chicago -87.629799 41.878113 IL 83051.59
Indiana Indianapolis -86.158066 39.768402 IN 64515.87
Iowa Des Moines -93.624962 41.586834 IA 71662.37
Kansas Wichita -97.335571 37.686020 KS 68217.81
Kentucky Louisville -85.758453 38.252666 KY 74884.12
Louisiana New Orleans -90.071533 29.951065 LA 67796.98
Maine Portland -68.972168 45.512230 ME 69326.25
Maryland Baltimore -76.612190 39.290386 MD 91222.13
Massachusetts Boston -71.057083 42.361145 MA 95875.05
Michigan Detroit -83.045753 42.331429 MI 74945.16
Minnesota Minneapolis -93.265015 44.977753 MN 83714.56
Mississippi Jackson -90.184807 32.298756 MS 60600.53
Missouri Kansas City -94.578568 39.099728 MO 76183.12
Montana Billings -108.504578 45.782650 MT 72506.58
Nebraska Omaha -95.934502 41.256538 NE 67247.40
Nevada Las Vegas -115.139832 36.169941 NV 71388.80
New Hampshire Manchester -71.454788 42.995640 NH 92510.96
New Jersey Newark -74.174393 40.731510 NJ 102116.36
New Mexico Albuquerque -106.650421 35.084385 NM 73629.43
New York New York City -74.005974 40.712776 NY 87532.37
North Carolina Charlotte -80.841141 35.223789 NC 77584.89
North Dakota Fargo -96.784640 46.876960 ND 64160.34
Ohio Columbus -82.998795 39.961178 OH 74218.89
Oklahoma Oklahoma City -97.516426 35.467560 OK 69718.63
Oregon Portland -122.658722 45.512230 OR 83167.85
Pennsylvania Philadelphia -75.165222 39.952583 PA 78800.86
Rhode Island Providence -71.412750 41.824459 RI 78936.94
South Carolina Charleston -79.940918 32.784618 SC 77377.33
South Dakota Sioux Falls -96.728333 43.547302 SD 65064.50
Tennessee Nashville -86.781601 36.162663 TN 71278.89
Texas Houston -95.369804 29.760427 TX 75505.77
Utah Salt Lake City -111.891045 40.760780 UT 84613.85
Vermont Burlington -73.210999 44.475990 VT 81803.28
Virginia Virginia Beach -75.975441 36.845131 VA 89404.37
Washington Seattle -122.332069 47.606209 WA 93878.67
West Virginia Charleston -79.931053 32.776474 WV 67575.59
Wisconsin Milwaukee -87.906471 43.038902 WI 76157.03
Wyoming Cheyenne -104.818802 41.140240 WY 85778.64

Cost of Living

The cost of living index compares the cost of living in a major city to a corresponding metropolitan area. The index incorporates the expense of various living expenses creating an aggregate measure that workforce entrants can use as a benchmark.

To find the cost of living index for each city in our dataset. A vector of state and city names was created and used to build an individual URL for each city. The url were then used to web-scrap the cost of living, cost of housing, cost of groceries and cost of utilities. This was added to a dataframe and written to a csv.

Website used: https://www.payscale.com/cost-of-living-calculator/

To calculate the cost of living in each city the index of each city was collected. This tells us the percent above or below the cities cost of living index is.

Example

Cost of Living Index fo the US: 100

Cost of Living in Dollars: $62,064

Wyoming has a cost of living index of 88, 12% lower than the national average.

dollarAmount = (88/100)*62064

dollarAmount = $54,616.32

Therefore the cost of living in dollars is $54,616.32

Median Gross Rent

Gross rent provides information on the monthly housing cost expenses for renters. Gross rent is the contract rent plus the estimated average monthly cost of utilities.

Originally we wanted to use housing information. This included the values of a mortgage, cost to outright buy a home and the cost of living with and without a mortgage. For the majority of us in the room the next step is not buying a home but renting therefore Median Gross Rent was the best choice.

Once the median gross rent of scraped and added to the tibble it was multiplied by 12 the find the yearly rent.

Website used: https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/

#1) What is the Percentage of Employment in each major city ?

Plotting Employment rate per 1000 for Computer Programmer by each State

#2) What major city has the highest percentage in?

#3) What are the top five companies in that major city?

Plotting Top 5 Companies

  • The city with highest employment rate per 1000 for Computer Programmer is Huntsville AL. I found Top Tech Companies from builtin.com

What are the top 5 most populated cities in the US by state for Computer Science majors based on the criteria we have created, average salary, gross median rent, and percent of computer science related jobs in the area?

The Top 5 Cities for Post-Grad Computer Science Majors to Move

Note: This list was created based on the following metrics. They must…

1. have a salary above the national average salary

2. have a positive Salary vs. Cost of Living value

3. have a high Employment per 1000 jobs

To find the cities that pass this metric this formula was used:

Salary vs Cost of Living and Rent = (Average Salary in Each State - (Cost of Living+ Median Gross Rent))

Once the Salary vs. Cost of Living and Rent were calculated the negative values were filtered out.

Any city below the national average salary of $78, 241, according to ziprecruiter, was filtered out.

Slice max was used to find the top 5 cities based on the employment per 1000 jobs available.

State City Average Salary in Each State Cost of Living Median Gross Rent Salary vs Cost of Living and Rent Employment Per 1000 Jobs
Utah Salt Lake City $84613.85 $63305.28 $12600 $8708.57000000001 2.180
Connecticut Bridgeport $97654.63 $62064 $14052 $21538.63 1.663
New Jersey Newark $102116.36 $76959.36 $13392 $11765 1.421
Maryland Baltimore $91222.13 $66408.48 $13128 $11685.65 1.272
Delaware Wilmington $82987.56 $68891.04 $12360 $1736.51999999999 1.031

Table A

What are the main tech companies located in the city?

Salt Lake City, Utah

SoFi, Overstock, M1,Quickbase and Angle Health

Bridgeport, Connecticut

Infosys, Cognizant Technology Solution, Wipro, Amazon, and IBM

Newark, New Jersey

Panansonic, KL Software technologies, Gadget Software, Amazon, and DataBank

Baltimore, Maryland

Catalyte, Whitebox, ZeroFOX, Zentech Manufacturing and Potomac Laser

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Formlabs FIS, ServiceNow, Wipfli, and Expert Institutes

Are there any major companies that are headquartered here that affect these results?

Salt Lake City, Utah

Daz Productions: a 3D-content and software company specializing in providing rigged 3D human models, associated accessory content, and software to the hobbyist as well as the prosumer market.

Bridgeport, Connecticut

Aquarion Water Company: Aquarion Water Company, a subsidiary of Eversource, is the public water supply company for approximately 236,000 customer accounts or more than 750,000 people in 72 cities and towns in Connecticut, Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

Newark, New Jersey

Prudential Financial: an American Fortune Global 500 and Fortune 500 company whose subsidiaries provide insurance, retirement planning, investment management, and other products and services to both retail and institutional customers throughout the United States and in over 40 other countries

Baltimore, Maryland

T Rowe Price: an American publicly owned global investment management firm that offers funds, subadvisory services, separate account management, and retirement plans and services for individuals, institutions, and financial intermediaries.

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Rockwell Autmation: an American provider of industrial automation whose brands include Allen-Bradley, FactoryTalk software and LifecycleIQ Services.

What are the top 5 mostly populated cities in the US by state that have an average salary above $78,214, the average salary for a computer science major? (This might differ from the overall top 5 because of gross median rent and percentage of jobs available in the desired field.)

The cities above the national average salary

State City Average Salary in Each State Cost of Living Median Gross Rent Salary vs Cost of Living and Rent Employment Per 1000 Jobs
New Jersey Newark $102116.36 $76959.36 $13392 $11765 1.421
Connecticut Bridgeport $97654.63 $62064 $14052 $21538.63 1.663
New Hampshire Manchester $92510.96 $68270.4 $13920 $10320.56 0.759
Maryland Baltimore $91222.13 $66408.48 $13128 $11685.65 1.272
Virginia Virginia Beach $89404.37 $68270.4 $16560 $4573.96999999999 0.395

Table B

Looking through this list it is important to note both Newark, New Jersey and Bridgeport, Connecticut show up in table A and table B. This is important to take into consideration when deciding the number one place for post-graduate computer science majors to move to.

Now let take a look at the most populated cities on our list.

Those cities are…

  1. New York City, New York
  2. Los Angeles, California
  3. Chicago, Illinois
  4. Houston, Texas
  5. Phoenix, Arizona
State City Average Salary in Each State Cost of Living Median Gross Rent Salary vs Cost of Living and Rent Employment Per 1000 Jobs
Arizona Phoenix $76613.18 $64546.56 $13200 $-1133.38 0.727
California Los Angeles $93156.61 $92475.36 $18276 $-17594.75 0.857
Illinois Chicago $83051.59 $76338.72 $13848 $-7135.13 0.527
New York New York City $87532.37 $158263.2 $17868 $-88598.83 1.421
Texas Houston $75505.77 $58340.16 $13032 $4133.61 0.717

The only city to have a positive Salary vs Cost of Living value is Houston, Texas, but the average salary of this city is below the national average therefore taking it out of the running for number one city to move to post-grad.

The other four cities in the list have a negative Salary vs. Cost of Living value also making these cities ineligible to be the number one city.

Also each of the these have a comparably low Employment per 1000 jobs ratio which could be due to the high population density of each of the cities.

The number one city for post-graduate computer science majors to move to is…

Newark, New Jersey

State City Average Salary in Each State Cost of Living Median Gross Rent Salary vs Cost of Living and Rent Employment Per 1000 Jobs
New Jersey Newark $102116.36 $76959.36 $13392 $11765 1.421

Newark, New Jersey is the best city to move to for post-graduate computer science majors. This city has an average salary above the national average, a positive salary vs. cost of living index and has a considerably high employment per 1000 jobs ratio